Swatting as a Service

Motherboard is reporting on AI-generated voices being used for "swatting": In fact, Motherboard has found, this synthesized call and another against Hempstead High School were just one small part of a months-long, nationwide campaign of dozens, and potentially hundreds, of threats made by one...

Ukraine shuts down disinformation bot farm

Given current world events, there’s an incredible amount of misinformation and disinformation around at the moment. Whether we’re talking 5G, the pandemic, vaccines, or invasions, there’s a lot out there. One of the biggest problems where bad information placed online is concerned is bot farms. A...

Bomb Threat, DDoS Purveyor Gets Eight Years

A 22-year-old North Carolina man has been sentenced to nearly eight years in prison for conducting bomb threats against thousands of schools in the U.S. and United Kingdom, running a service that launched distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks, and for possessing sexually explicit images of...

Alleged Member of Neo-Nazi Swatting Group Charged

Federal investigators on Friday arrested a Virginia man accused of being part of a neo-Nazi group that targeted hundreds of people in "swatting" attacks, wherein fake bomb threats, hostage situations and other violent scenarios were phoned in to police as part of a scheme to trick them into...

Neo-Nazi SWATters Target Dozens of Journalists

Nearly three dozen journalists at a broad range of major publications have been targeted by a far-right group that maintains a Deep Web database listing the personal information of people who threaten their views. This group specializes in encouraging others to harass those targeted by their ire,...

Bomb Threat Hoaxer Exposed by Hacked Gaming Site

Federal authorities this week arrested a North Carolina man who allegedly ran with a group of online hooligans that attacked Web sites including this one, took requests on Twitter to call in bomb threats to thousands of schools, and tried to frame various online gaming sites as the culprits. In a...

Three Charged for Working With Serial Swatter

The U.S. Justice Department has filed criminal charges against three U.S. men accused of swatting, or making hoax reports of bomb threats or murders in a bid to trigger a heavily armed police response to a target's address. Investigators say the men, aged 19 to 23, all carried out the attacks wit...

A week in security (December 10 – 16)

Last week on Labs, we took a look at some new Mac malware, a collection of various scraped data dumps, the protection of power grids, and how bad actors are using SMB vulnerabilities. Other cybersecurity news Millions affected by Facebook photo API bug: An issue granted third-party apps more acce...

Fake Bomb Threat Emails Demanding Bitcoins Sparked Chaos Across US, Canada

"Pay $20,000 worth of bitcoin, or a bomb will detonate in your building" A massive number of businesses, schools, government offices and individuals across the US, New Zealand and Canada on Thursday received bomb threats via emails that caused nationwide chaos, forcing widespread evacuations and...

Bitcoin Bomb Scare Associated with Sextortion Scammers

This blog was written by Jaeson Schultz. Organizations across the country are on edge today after a flurry of phony bomb threats hit several public entities Thursday, such as universities, schools and news outlets, among others. The attackers distributed malicious emails claiming to have placed...

Bomb Threats Emailed Around the World

The National Cybersecurity and Communications Integration Center NCCIC, part of the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency CISA, is aware of a worldwide email campaign targeting businesses and organizations with bomb threats. The emails claim that a device will detonate unless a ransom ...

Bomb Threat Hoaxer, DDos Boss Gets 3 Years

The ringleader of a gang of cyber hooligans that made bomb threats against hundreds of schools and launched distributed denial-of-service DDoS attacks against Web sites -- including KrebsOnSecurity on multiple occasions -- has been sentenced to three years in a U.K. prison, and faces the...

Calif. Man Pleads Guilty in Fatal Swatting Case, Faces 20+ Years in Prison

A California man who pleaded guilty Tuesday to causing dozens of swatting attacks -- including a deadly incident in Kansas last year -- now faces 20 or more years in prison. Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie. Tyler Barriss, 25, went by the nickname SWAuTistic on Twitter, and reveled in...

The Feds Just Hit Notorious Swatter Tyler Barriss With 46 New Charges. He Intends to Plead Guilty

Prosecutors in California have filed 46 new counts against Tyler Barriss for bomb threats, fraud, and swatting incidents nationwide. He’s angling to get the case transferred to Kansas and intends to plead guilty...

Teen arrested for DDoS attack on ProtonMail & making fake bomb threats

By Waqas ProtonMail, a Swiss-based end-to-end email encryption service, has announced the name of one of the attackers involved in the DDoS attack against the company earlier this year. Due to the attack, the email service of ProtonMail stopped responding for a minute several times despite having...

Leader of DDoS-for-Hire Gang Pleads Guilty to Bomb Threats

A 19-year-old man from the United Kingdom who headed a cybercriminal group whose motto was "Feds Can't Touch Us" pleaded guilty this week to making bomb threats against thousands of schools. On Aug. 31, officers with the U.K.'s National Crime Agency NCA arrested Hertfordshire resident George...

19-Year-Old Hacker Arrested Over Making Hoax School and Flight Bomb Threats

British police have arrested a 19-year-old teen who is an alleged member of Apophis Squad cybercriminal group responsible for making hoax bomb threats to thousands of schools and airlines; and DDoSing ProtonMail and Tutanota secure email services. George Duke-Cohan was arrested in his bedroom at...

19-Year-Old Hacker Arrested Over Making Hoax School and Flight Bomb Threats

British police have arrested a 19-year-old teen who is an alleged member of Apophis Squad cybercriminal group responsible for making hoax bomb threats to thousands of schools and airlines; and DDoSing ProtonMail and Tutanota secure email services. George Duke-Cohan was arrested in his bedroom at...

Serial SWATter Tyler “SWAuTistic” Barriss Charged with Involuntary Manslaughter

Tyler Raj Barriss, a 25-year-old serial "swatter" whose phony emergency call to Kansas police last month triggered a fatal shooting, has been charged with involuntary manslaughter and faces up to eleven years in prison. Tyler Raj Barriss, in an undated selfie. Barriss's online alias -- "SWAuTisti...

Serial Swatter “SWAuTistic” Bragged He Hit 100 Schools, 10 Homes

The individual who allegedly made a fake emergency call to Kansas police last week that summoned them to shoot and kill an unarmed local man has claimed credit for raising dozens of these dangerous false alarms -- calling in bogus hostage situations and bomb threats at roughly 100 schools and at...